Enhancing Government Capacity Through a Department of Technology and Innovation

From the Executive Branch perspective, the case of the withdrawal from Afghanistan surfaced several issues that highlighted broader technology weaknesses across agencies. The U.S. State Department had several technology and process weaknesses including its distribution of easily duplicated airport visas for those eligible to evacuate the country3, and an inability to adequately track how many Americans were in the country4 . Most of the immigration cases referred to the State Department from Congress, families, or other entities were being sent via email to one email inbox at the State Department. Additionally, utilizing a variety of tools and technologies, an informal network of volunteers assisted the U.S. government and non-government organizations in evacuating, relocating, and providing aid to roughly 124,000 people including 6,000 Americans. For volunteers to rapidly use open-source technology to quickly do what the State Department struggled to do at the time, presents a new challenge for the future of U.S. diplomacy and national security. Almost two months after the withdrawal, Secretary Blinken would acknowledge this fact in a public speech on the importance of modernizing the State Department’s technology, communications, and analytical capabilities. He also focused on the necessity of equipping the agency to address cybersecurity and emerging technology threats to meet 21st-century challenges.5

Historically, U.S. executive branch agencies have been created in response to a crisis and the effort usually reflected the balance of power in the U.S. economy at the time. The Department of Agriculture was established by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War when Agriculture represented a large percentage of the U.S. economy. Agriculture currently represents .5 percent of GDP, while the technology sector represents approximately 8 percent of GDP. Part II of this report recommends the

3 Impelli, Matthew. American Trapped in Kabul Explains Bogus Visa Email Sent to thousands,” August 20, 2021. https://www.newsweek.com/american-trapped-kabul-explains-bogus-visa-email-sent-thousandsbrain-worms-1621668

4 This is largely due to a challenging F-77 process. In 2007, the GAO noted that the U.S. State Department had conducted 270 evacuations since 1988, two years after the first Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act of 1986 (P.L. 99-399) created a legal obligation for the Secretary of State to evacuate US citizens during crises. The issues identified in that report have not been revisited by Congress since.

5 Remarks, “Secretary Antony J. Blinken on the Modernization of American Diplomacy,” October 27, 2021. https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-on-the-modernization-of-american-diplomacy/

creation of a new technology and innovation agency to better address how the government deals with technology across the Executive Branch, how it promotes cutting-edge technology developments, and how it regulates the public harms created by the technology industry.

A Department of Technology and Innovation could help the U.S. government maintain international competitiveness, protect users and their privacy, and mitigate societal harms created by rapidly evolving technologies. Congress has increasingly proposed the creation of several technology departments, agencies, and other offices, including a new bureau for cybersecurity at the State Department, a privacy agency, and an office at the Federal Trade Commission staffed with “technologists.” It may be more effective to create an executive branch agency, a Department of Technology and Innovation, to address the issues for which many of the smaller offices at the State Department, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Government Services Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies were, or are being established.

Recent crises have provided the United States with several use cases to inform how the government can better prepare for emergencies and threats in the future. Ignoring the critical lessons of the 116th and 117th Congresses will not solve any of the problems the country has and will continue to face in the future. The United States has the ability to bolster its institutional and legislative capacity to respond more effectively to the next stress test, and it ought to do so now while it can.

1. The Digital Information Crisis

On Wednesday May 5th, 1971, just hours before 1,200 Vietnam War protestors were arrested on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in the midst of what would become the largest mass arrest in U.S. history, forty-year-old Lawrence Britt was testifying before a subcommittee of the United States Senate. Inside what would become the Senate Russell Building, Britt, a former senior intelligence officer for the Czechoslovakian Intelligence Service and Deputy Chief of the country’s newly created Department for Disinformation described the Soviet Union’s global influence operations, and, despite the risk, did so under his real name.6 He opened his testimony by clarifying that the term “disinformation” was the same as “active measures” in the Soviet Union and that his department conducted three types of operations: disinformation operations, propaganda operations, and influence operations.

The term “active measures” is an English translation for the title of a Soviet intelligence unit in the 1950’s tasked with all disinformation, political influence, and other deceptive influence operations.7 In his testimony Britt included a description of an unsuccessful Czechoslovakian Intelligence operation that attempted to influence the 1964 U.S. Presidential election by accusing Republican candidate Barry Goldwater of being racist,8 an operation that was partially influenced by Soviet training and methodology. A Senator pointed out, and Britt confirmed, that the effort was unsuccessful because Americans spread enough false and negative information about the candidate themselves. Britt noted that the effort was an element of a long-term plan by his agency and others like it to isolate the United States “politically and morally,” to “disintegrate NATO,” and to ensure U.S. troops withdrew from Europe. Britt also pointed out that the United States should not become preoccupied with “espionage paranoia” as it had in the 1950’s, because such paranoia, he said, “can weaken the democratic world.” Despite learning disinformation operations from the Soviet Union, by 1968, Britt added, his country, in the midst of

6 Britt was the pseudonym used in the documentation for Ladislav Bittman

7 See Dennis Kux, “Soviet Active Measures and Disinformation: Overview and Assessment,” Vol. XV. No. 4, Parameters, Journal of the US Army War College.

8 He noted the operation did not have much impact because Americans were very good at smearing candidates on their own.